This Kingdom by the Sea
by horsecrazy2
Summary: A what-if story. Seifer Almasy/Quistis Trepe
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: So this is an experiment by me...that might just go horribly, horribly wrong. We will all see, I suppose. I got an idea for a series of almost-drabbles (I call them almost because I think true drabbles would probably be even shorter,) that I have decided to post in between updates of Ashes to Dust, as a challenge to myself. These will go up randomly, whenever I have a chance to work on them, because Ashes takes priority. I decided to do this because something about FF 8 makes me write novel-length fics, and it's truly horrible of me to inflict that on all of you poor readers sitting in front of your computers reading 20+ page chapters with burned-out retinas. So, this new work will consist of 'chapters' that are no more than a page in length-that's the only requirement I've set on myself. They don't have to be a specific number of words, and they can be as short as I want them to be, but they must be no longer than a page. Like I said earlier, there is a very good chance this will go horribly, horribly wrong, and if that happens, I apologize, and feel free to throw virtual fruit/vegetables/rocks/other projectiles at me.**

This is the ending:

Flaps of open smiling neck skin between his hands that he cannot put back together, that shift and slide and cry red down his shaking epileptic's fingers.

This must be what cancer feels like, this thing inside his chest eating everything.

His mother's beach is very warm and soft and inviting underneath him, and if he can just close his eyes, if he can just pretend, for just one eye blink of a semi-second, this is what he will see:

Yellow and blue and yellow and green, stretched out on sands that form a marriage of gold and paler ocher, that devour the waves of her hair until he can barely distinguish where his mother's beach ends, and she begins. Innocuous blue eyes and gap-toothed child's grin, and soft-sculpted cheekbones that will protrude like a model's, later.

This is everything she used to be.

Her blank staring eyes have eased the fist clench on his brain, just slightly.

-_operor non operor is operor non operor is operor non operor is operor non operor is operor non operor is operor non operor is operor non operor is operor non operor-_

Above him, the sky is very bright.

Black sweeps of v that are the wings of far-off birds slice sun glare from his eyes, for just a moment.

He closes her eyes very gently.

And then this knight's sword that is another limb to him, this murderer's weapon that shines wet-gleam red with her blood-

It is in his hand.

And he is falling toward it.

Between the unmoving marbles that are her eyes and the cold-finger skewer of blade edge through his guts, dying is not very painful.

It brings him clarity that has not been his for a very long time.

And suddenly, he can remember the beginning.

He hits his mother's beach with a smile on his face.


	2. Chapter 2

She is his first princess, resplendent in the billowing folds of one of Matron's old dresses, patch-worn and taped together along lines of broken seams that trail moth-chewed thread.

When he won't let her down from the tree that is the castle he is here to save her from, his first princess punches him in the eye.

He beats her with his knight's sword, swings of crudely-hewn stick point that jab her into submission.

At least, this is what he tells himself, until she rears up with a kick that takes him between the legs like a hammer, and he falls to his mother's beach clutching himself and screaming.

She runs very quickly.

His awkward hobbling does not catch her.

Later, he puts worms in her bed, and the smile he buries in his pillow goes very bright and very wide as her screams rip Zell Dincht snorting from his slumber, the points of spikes that are his hair standing out like sun rays in the dark.

Matron scolds him, but she does not punish him.

She loves him very much, her precious little boy. He is her favorite, she confesses in a whisper to him one day, her sweet little favorite with a smile that lights up her entire afternoon, but he can't tell the other children because this is their own little secret, Matron and Seifer's, Seifer and Matron's.

He wants another story.

_-once upon a time there was a beautiful princess who lived in a kingdom by the sea with her father the king, and they were very happy until one day an evil witch came and stole the princess away-_

His knight's sword trails loops and whorls of sloppily curving semicircle through his mother's beach, and underneath his feet, the ocean eats away another stratum of hard-packed sand that crumbles into brine-scented foam.

One day, it will eat the entire beach, but he doesn't know this yet.

Right now, he is thinking about the princess and the witch, and the prince who didn't get there in time, and he is certain, he is _positive_-_I could have done it better one day they'll all see-_

His little blonde-haired princess is sitting on the front porch, swinging her feet.

"Quisty sit in the tree ok? I'm gonna' save you this time-_don't get down 'till I tell you to_."

"Matron says I can save _myself_, if I want to. So that's what I'm going to do. I don't need a _boy _to take care of me."

His anger is explosively instant and forever, and he can feel his cheeks go red with twists of flame that are burning burning burning inside of him-

"But I'm the _knight_. And you're the _princess_."

This is what he knows of the world, at seven.


	3. Chapter 3

The table in front of her is mirror-polished shiny.

She is sitting all alone at it.

This is how they have made her spend most of her time, this new family of hers with the barren childless mother and the father who works too much, this little dysfunctional semicircle of shattered marriage straining at the seams, held together with just the bitter adhesive of their stuck-on smiles, and the cosmetics she spackles herself in each morning like paint, so they cannot see the cracks.

Quistis sees them anyway.

They try her out like a new car, temporary loaner vehicle they show off for just a handful of weeks, before they realize she is too much work, this child they have always hoped and begged and prayed for.

They send her back to Matron, Matron with the kind conciliatory smile and the open arms and the kitchen that smells like cookies, Matron with the scowling little blonde-haired boy hiding behind her skirts, because he broke another of Cid's tools.

He is the only one left, this blonde-haired little boy with his fairytales and his knight's dreams.

They sit together on their mother's beach, this unwanted girl and this unwanted boy, and they each secretly, simultaneously promise that one day, someone will want them. One day, this family that returned her like broken merchandise and all these potential families that have picked him over, left him behind in lieu of prettier cleaner _nicer _children with manners and boring useless dreams who will grow up to lead boring useless lives-

They will regret not picking her. They will regret not picking _him_, this green-eyed one-day knight who will slay dragons and rescue princesses and save kingdoms.

Together, they watch the sun bleed itself dry in the ocean, and she thinks that when he is not talking, she could almost maybe like him. She could almost maybe one day love him, this boy who rescues her from trees and helps her build sand castles, when no one is looking. This boy who is holding her hand because he is lonely, because _she _is lonely, and even though he will pinch her arm or leg or side when he remembers that he is being nice, when he remembers that he is not supposed to be sitting here like this, letting her know with silent intermittent squeezes of his fingers that everything will be all right-

She thinks, right now, that this beach and this boy beside her and this mother behind her, calling them inside for dinner-

They are not so horrible.

They are, really, the best things that have ever happened to her. That _will _ever happen to her, and the stupid family who hoped and begged and prayed for a pretty wide-eyed child-that barren childless mother and that silent staring father who stayed out late, most nights-

It's their loss. It _is_, she tells herself, but her hand comes up to wipe tears anyway, and this unwanted green-eyed boy watches her do it, and squeezes her hand again.


End file.
